Source Lake Trail
Date: November 22, 2009
Difficulty: 5 out of 10
Distance: 6 miles roundtrip
Elevation Gain: 700 ft
Time: 3 to 4 hours
Location: I-90 exit 52; Alpental Ski Area
Users Group: Hikers & Leashed Dogs Only
Permits: None Required
Trail Conditions: 12” to 20” of fresh fluffy snow
Hiking with: Linna Freeman, Evangeline Yu & Dr. Robert McElroy

We met at our usual Starbucks, exit 17  to decide on what hike would suit everyone.  It was raining all morning, so…we decided to hike Source Lake at I-90 exit 52 at Snoqualmie Pass.  The rain kept coming down and it finally started to change to snow at the pass; as much as I love the rain….I would rather put my gear on in the snow than the rain any day.  Finally snowing now, we exited at 52 and drove pass Alpental Ski area to the last parking lot.   

After putting on the gators and MSR snowshoes we started our snow adventure.  It started deep and just got deeper; we were the first ones on the trail, which meant fresh deep snow.  We followed the main snowshoe trail for a couple of miles and finally started to pick-up some elevation as we got closer to Source Lake.  This is where we started blazing our own trail, at times we were going through snow waist deep high.  After hitting the 3,800 foot level, Dr. Rob and I took turns breaking the trial; even with snowshoes on, we were sinking down over our knees.  Linna and Evangeline were loving life with Rob and I compressing the trail to manageable 6 to 10 inches of snow.  

Staying at the 3,800 foot level, we weren’t on the main trail…but just North enough to get around it and head for the east side.  We had to be a little careful crossing the creek that feeds into Source Lake; there were some mini size crevasse that we had to cross.  After getting on the East side, we couldn’t find the trail at first, so we trudged our way up in search for the trail back to Snow Lake trailhead.  We didn’t find it at first, so we angled our way Southeast through the trees until we hit the avalanche prone area.  Even though the chance of an avalanche was low, we crossed this area with care.  After carefully crossing the open area, we found the trail and we were on our way home.